Holdfast is a small collection of pay-once, browser-only conversion tools. No accounts, no investors, no growth targets. It exists because simple jobs should not come wrapped in monthly fees, and because your files should never have to leave your own machine to get converted.
The problem with the simple jobs
Converting a folder of photos. Getting your chat history into something readable. Pulling your data out of an app before you leave it. These are afternoon jobs, not relationships. But most software wants the relationship: an account, an upload, a subscription you will forget to cancel.
Worse, the upload part means handing your photos, your conversations, your recordings to a server you know nothing about, to do a job your own computer is perfectly capable of doing.
How Holdfast does it instead
- Browser only. The conversion runs on your machine. Your files never leave it. There is no server to trust because there is no server involved.
- Pay once. A licence costs a few dollars, covers a set number of conversions, and never renews. Top up if you ever need more.
- One job per tool. Each tool does one conversion and does it properly, with the dates, locations, and attachments intact. That is the whole product.
Small tools, made carefully, for the data you intend to keep.
The name
A holdfast is the part of kelp that grips the rock. Not a root, it does not feed the plant, it just holds on through whatever the ocean throws at it. That is the job here: keeping your data anchored to formats that will still open in twenty years, whatever the apps and platforms do in the meantime.
The sister site
Holdfast grew out of Wearable Converter, a tool built on the same pattern for fitness data: pay once, convert in the browser, keep what is yours. It still runs as its own site, and if your problem is Fitbit or Google Health exports, that is where to go.
Questions, problems, or a conversion you wish existed? Get in touch. Every email is read.